By Rudolph Bauer, Ph.D. Diplomate in Clinical Psychology, A.B.P.P. Peter Bauer, Existential Archetypal Astrologer
A person’s own inner most awareness and the movements within their awareness field bring forth their direct personal experience of their cosmological archetypal field of awareness. This spontaneous event is given to us within the archetypal realm of awareness. The archetypal dimension manifests itself as us, and reveals itself to us through our experience of its self-manifestation.
Transitional Space and Awareness
Often the first movement is for a person is to enter into the experience of awareness, and this awareness is intrinsically a modality of transitional space and transitional relatedness. It is within transitional awareness, that the archetypal experience can and does manifest within us. This manifestation of transitional awareness can be experienced through dreams, apparitions, mythological symbolic experience, luminous relational events; and cosmological symbolic processes such as archetypal astrology, meditative awareness and contemplative praxis.
The transitional nature of awareness has been exquisitely described by Donald Winnicott, the great English psychoanalyst. Transitional awareness is the experience that arises when a person is not located in their mind alone, nor are they located in a singular ego function of the mind, such as mentalistic thinking.
Transitional awareness is the intermediary area of experience, and this intermediary area of experience has been described as the “space-in–be- tween.” It is the space in-between reality and fantasy, in-between thought and affects, in-between sensation and memory, and in- between the functions of the mind. Winnicott described this awareness experience as being in the space of spacious non conceptual knowingness, a thought free knowingness. The transitional time is the ‘opening of the opening’ that allows for the emergence and manifestation of the archetypal dimension of human experience within awareness. Transitional awareness opens during wakefulness and also opens within sleep. The dreams that emerge through transitional space and open during sleep will be dramatic dreams or archetypal dreams. Within transitional awareness we can experience a most basic sense of self which Winnicott describes as “the ongoing sense of continuity of being”.
The Distinction between Mind and Awareness
Winnicott’s brilliant understanding utilizes the important distinction between mind and the awareness. This same important difference between mind and awareness is made in the Phenomenological Dzogchen tradition of Tibetan Buddhism and in tantric tradition of Hindu Kashmir Shavism. This same difference between mind and awareness is expressed in Continental Phenomenology of Martin Heidegger and Maurice Merleau Ponty. This difference between analytic mind and experiential awareness is made in the many forms of experiential psychotherapy including contemporary Gestalt psychotherapy. Many of these forms of experiential psychotherapies arise out Continental Phenomenology. In transitional awareness a person shifts from being aware of mind alone, and enters the process of becoming aware of awareness. The person locates themselves within the field of awareness. The field of awareness is a primordial opening to the depths and breathe of awareness itself, awareness as the realm of psyche.
Becoming Aware of Awareness
The most direct way of entering transitional space is for the person to take the action of becoming aware of their own awareness. One way to become aware of our own awareness is to suspend our mind briefly and this suspension frees our awareness from focusing on mind alone, (mindfulness) and in doing so our awareness becomes aware of its own self. This act of becoming aware of awareness is within the matrix of transitional experience that allows and supports the archetypal dimension to manifest itself in clarity and experiential nearness. When one is not in the transitional field of awareness, there is limitation on the possibility of the experiential manifestation of archetypal configurations of light and energy.
There is no one way of entering this experience of awareness, this place of liminal space. Some ways are: gazing in thought free absorption, suspension of mind, suspension of breath, suspension of judgment, falling into exhaustion, gazing, falling in love and devotional love to name a few.
Suspending the Mind: the Epoche
The phenomenologist describes the act of suspending our mind as the epoche. In suspension of the mind, one begins by suspending judgmental- ness. Furthermore, in the suspension of mind, one is no longer locating their awareness in mind alone or even a particular function of mind, but are locating their awareness within awareness itself, in openness and in spacious knowingness. One’s awareness is becoming aware of awareness itself. This suspension of mind is essentially a suspension of judgmental- ness. Or as some eastern traditions describe, one is located in emptiness as a form of knowingness, in sunyata. Experiencing the felt difference between mind and awareness supports the skillful means of entering into transitional space of the space of awareness.
If a person is located in mind alone then only an intellectual apprehension can take place but not the in the depth experience of this transformative experiential dimension of spacious knowingness existing-ness. This liminal experience is foundational for in depth forms of meditation that go beyond mindfulness. Going beyond mindfulness means going beyond either focusing on the mind or being located in mind alone. When one is located in mind alone, one is dissociated from the field of awareness and dissociated from the embodiment of awareness. In becoming aware of our own awareness we are in the process of embodiment of awareness. This embodiment is important for the integration of mind awareness continuum within the field of the body. The body is the medium of the field.
As we sustain awareness, the field quality of awareness becomes manifest. The field qualities of awareness are vast spaciousness, vital energy, and radiant luminosity and the field of vast resonance. This field is infinite in its horizon, vast and multidimensional.
Integrating the Mind into the Spaciousness of Awareness
The next step after having established ourselves in the field of awareness, we then integrate our mind into this transitional space of awareness. To the degree that a person is able to be both in the knowingness of mind and the knowingness of awareness, to that degree the archetypal medium of experience become present and embodied in the immediate reality of our everyday life and existence.
Continental phenomenology describes how the mind knows form, and awareness knows Being. The mind knows beings and things. The mind knows difference. The mind knows subject and object, the mind knows self and otherness. The mind knows duality. The mind knows time. Awareness knows Being. Awareness knows oneness and awareness knows indivisibleness. Awareness knows non-duality. Awareness knows timelessness.
When the mind is integrated within the awareness field then something amazing happens.
The person can know Being through a being, and through a being a person can experience the Being-ness of the being. To experience the Being-ness of a being is to experience Being itself. Being manifesting Being-ness is the self-manifestation of Being itself. A person can know duality within non-duality and within non-duality know duality. This the process of natural self-liberation. Through a being we can experience Being itself. Though our experience of our own being, Being itself can be experienced. Liberation is that direct, that intimate and that close.
Opening: The Archetypal Dimension of Existence
The archetypal dimension is the realm of luminous spaciousness, luminous configurations of energy, and luminous experiential resonance. This subtle luminous experience is within the medium of awareness. The archetypal dimension is so very subtle and much less dense then the ordinary realm of experience of our life world.
Experiencing the Archetypal Dimension as Apparitional Reality
The unfolding manifestation of the archetypal dimension can be experienced in many subtle forms. The experiential manifestation can be experienced in terms of the experience of configurations of energy, the experience of configurations of light, the experience of configurations of spacious fields of Being, the configurations of unfolding imaginative forms of light, unfolding configurations of resonance, the unfolding of configurations of multiple meanings, and the unfolding of life events and archetypal drama. This manifestation of configurations of luminous forms of energy and light is a major mode of archetypal manifestation. The manifestations may be experienced as apparitional experience in the awakened state of awareness. These apparitional appearance are the actual experience of the manifestation of subtle reality. Apparitional experience is the direct experience of the manifestation of the archetypal realm. The archetypal realm manifests as apparitional experience. The archetypal realm brings forth concretely the actuality of the experience of ordinary reality of life experience. Apparitional dimension and the Sambogakaya reality are in continuity. The apparitional dimension is the manifestation of the essence of archetypal reality.
Translucent Experience: Trans-lucidity of Awareness Field
Mythological Forms
The unfolding manifestation of apparitional experience is translucent experience. These translucent apparitions may be personal forms such as saints and ancient masters. These apparitions may be mythological forms of deities and dakinis, gods and goddesses, and may be primordial cosmological archetypes and archetypal dramaturgical scenes. The apparitions often are the mythical expression of the great spiritual and mystical traditions of both the east and the west. These apparitions may be expression of elements of nature and earth. These archetypal manifestations do not necessarily depend upon a person’s education or practice of the eastern and western mystical traditions. Apparitional life is spontaneous and compelling. The apparitional and the reality of experiential life events are indivisible. These apparitional manifestations when expressed in mythic language and mythic apparitions is the imaginal coding and expression of primordial experience.
Situational Forms and Circumstantial Forms
At times the apparitional is simply the translucent experience of situational appearance that is infused by the apparitional dimension of the Sambogakaya archetypal realm. There is a blending of the Sambogakaya archetypal and Nirmanakaya dimensions of ordinary reality. There is an infusion of the ordinary life realm of experience by the archetypal realm simultaneously and non-dualistically. The Nirmanakaya of ordinary life and the archetypal realm are intertwined.
Apparition or Hallucination
Sacred text support the invocation of these archetypal manifestations of awareness that are personified and symbolized. The apparitional is one mode of archetypal manifestation.
There is a difference between hallucinations and apparitional manifestation. Hallucinations is the function of the manifestations of minds distortions and the minds interpretation of its own distortions. Within the mirage of hallucination the felt sense of the field is often frenzied or deadening and permeated by the sense of unreality and a sense of dissociated-ness and fragmented-ness. True apparitions are manifestations of the Sambogakaya dimension of human awareness, the archetypal dimension of primordial awareness. Even within the realm of authentic apparitions the person’s mind may misinterpret the apparitional dimension as a concrete identity as one’s own personality and one’s own mind. This kind of identification will often results in states of personal omnipotence, inflation and solipsism and confusion. Understanding the nature of the apparitional at times requires guidance and self-understanding.
Experiential Foreclosure of Archetypal
There are some traditions of Buddhism that disparage and negate apparitional archetypal manifestations as deluded-ness and of no value. This is a function of assumptions about the unreality of phenomena, the unreality of appearance, and the unhappy and solipsistic conclusion that everything other than emptiness is illusion. This view discounts the archetypal manifestation of phenomena, and this view discounts the understanding that emptiness and radiance are in complete oneness. Some Buddhist traditions discount the manifestation of radiance. They discount the actuality of the oneness of radiance and primordial awareness. Some Buddhist frames are locked into the 5th century BC. This limiting frame also discounts the equality of the different kayas. These kayas are potential space, archetypal reality and the ordinary realm of human experience. In Dzogchen, language for these dimensions are Dharmakaya, Sambogakaya and Nirmanakaya.
This unhappy and unskilled criticalness of the unfolding of apparitional life forecloses for the devotees of these traditions the doorway into luminous awareness of the Sambogakaya dimension and corresponding modes of self-liberation.
Trans-lucidity of Archetypal Realms of Experience
The experience of the archetypal dimension is the experience of translucency. This trans-lucidity is the medium of the archetypal realm. There is trans-lucidity of experience and the trans-lucidity of understanding. There is trans-lucidity of vision. This trans-lucidity is not only visual but can be translucent as sound, translucent as kinesthetic and the profoundly translucent experience of everything and anything. There is lucidity both as the lucidity of inner awareness and there is the lucidity of outer phenomena. Within the lucidity of awareness and the lucidity of phenomena there is the manifestation of non-duality as lucidity.
Within the duality of awareness and phenomena the archetypal dimension manifest both within our mind and within our circumstance. Within the duality of awareness and phenomena there is the non-dual indivisibility of lucidity. The archetypal dimension manifests as lucid non-duality which is simultaneously manifesting the dualistic experience of the lucidity of awareness, the lucidity within and lucidity as phenomena.
Experiencing the Archetypal Manifestations
Mythological expression
There are numerous ways of experiencing the archetypal dimension. Dreams are the most ordinary and common manifestation of the archetypal manifestation. Another form is the mythological configurations of the gods and goddesses, and the mythologies of the deities and dakinis that are metaphors of archetypal configuration of the field. There are many mythological expressions of the archetypal energies and powers. These mythological expression reflect the various spiritual and cultural traditions. Some of these traditions are Indian, Tibetan, African, Chinese, Western Alchemical, Christian, Islamic, Jewish, Greek and Roman expressions and Native Americans to name only a few.
Astrological and Cosmological Expression
Another powerful ancient expression of the archetypal dimension is the language and metaphors of planetary energies and corresponding astrological interpretation of the planetary fields and archetypal planetary configurations of energy and light. In astrological understanding the planetary energies are similar to the metaphorical archetypal gods and goddesses.
Contemporary Masters of Archetypal Understanding and Invocation
An example of the mastery of both understanding and invocation of the archetypal realm is contemporary Brazilian Shaman Joao De deus. Joao has the capacity to invoke the archetypal dimension as Christian saints such as Francis Xavier, the ancient healers of Brazil. John of God visited and taught at the Washington Center for Consciousness Studies a number of years ago.
The master of Kashmir Shavism, Swami Muktananda had vast power to invoke the presence of the archetypal dimension. He was a master of invoking the primordial awareness.
In the realm of Taoism and Medical Qi Gong, Dr. Yan Xin is a master of the Tao healing archetypal dimension. Dr. Yan Xin also visited and taught at the Washington Center.
Chakrapani Ullal is the great contemporary master of understanding and the practice of the archetypal dimensions of Vedic astrology. His understanding manifests in his direct perceiving of the archetypal energy fields as described through the planetary metaphors. Besides his mastery of Jyotish Mati he has the subtle capacity to invoke the archetypal energies of archetypal realm. Chakrapani has taught often at The Washington Center.
Richard Tarnas the western astrologer has a mastery of understanding of the archetypal dimension of existence and its relation to time and circumstance. He is the author of the great text in archetypal cosmology named Psyche and Cosmos.
James Hillman is the archetypal psychoanalyst who elaborated Jung’s archetypal psychology in a contemporary philosophical context.
Other contemporary masters of archetypal understanding and invocation are Tibetan Lamas such as: Lama Tharchin, Lama Norhla, Lama Wangdor, Namkai Norbu Rinpoche, Kungsang Dechen Lingpa, and Rigdzin Dorge. Many of these Lamas have taught at the Washington Center. Though their traditions are different, all these teachers have this capacity to bring forth the archetypal dimension into ordinary experience for the benefit of everyone.
The Three Dimensions of Primordial Awareness
The archetypal realm is the intermediate area between ordinary life experience as Nirmanakaya and the pure potentiality, pure creativity of Dharmakaya. This archetypal realm should not be underestimated as this cosmological dimension is often dismissed in contemporary life just as it was in early 5th century BC. Buddhism.
Contemporary people of this century and 5th century BC. Buddhism see themselves as rational. This rationality is simply a rationalistic explanation for what they do not know, and do not experience. The rational mind is limited to mentalistic perception. As St. Thomas Aquinas said ‘whatever is received is received according to the mind of the receiver.’ And he also said that which you do not have, you cannot give.
The Sambogakaya archetypal dimension both greatly influences and manifest our ordinary reality of our living world which is called the Nirmanakaya dimension in Dzogchen. To have knowledge and skill in invoking the archetypal dimension is be able to bring forth positive elements of the Sambogakaya archetypal dimension into the realm of our ordinary life and circumstances of the Nirmanakaya. The Sambogakaya can infuse the Nirmanakaya. The archetypal can infuse and illuminate our minds and our embodiment. The body is the medium of the field.
Ordinary Experience as Archetypal In Origin
The most straightforward and obvious experience is the experience of the field of awareness within our ordinary life situation and life circumstances of our immediate life. There is a more subtle luminous field that is holding and manifesting this field of ordinary life experience and this more primordial field is the field of the archetypal dimension. The archetypal field is manifesting as the radiance of subtle energy, subtle radiance light and open luminous spaciousness as the trans-lucid fields that permeates and manifests our personal experience and circumstances. In the language of phenomenological Dzogchen this is the Sambogakaya dimension. The trans-lucid fields and fields of radiance manifest the Nirmanakaya dimension of ordinary life circumstance and ordinary life situations. There are no hard lines between these living dimensions of primordial awareness. They are non-dualistic and yet distinctly different manifestations. They are in total oneness and yet completely differentiated. They are exactly the same yet experientially different. Primordial Awareness is multidimensional and infinite in its horizons.
Beyond the archetypal Sambogakaya dimension is ground awareness or primordial awareness or Dharmakaya dimenson. This dimension is timelessness, pure no-thingness that creates everything and anything. This ground awareness is total purity, total pure openness, unbound spaciousness and untamed luminous radiance, clear light becoming everything and anything. This primordial dimension self-manifests as everything and anything. In this way the universe is pantheistic.
Luminosity of Knower and Luminosity of Known
We are able to experience our unfolding life circumstance and unfolding life situation as light and as the radiance of primordial awareness. Our illuminated knowing directly knows the luminosity of phenomena. The luminosity of awareness experiences the innate luminosity of phenomena. The luminosity of our own awareness allows us to penetrate and experience the luminosity within, and as phenomena. The luminous purity of our own awareness allows us to experience the luminous purity of pervasive phenomena.
The Three Dimensions of Knowing of the Knower
Our own awareness is embodied. Our own personal awareness is contained in body and mind. Contained in time, our personal awareness is the very same primordial awareness that manifests everything and anything.
Our personal knowingness is a function of the Nirmanakaya dimension and so we can know the Nirmanakaya realm. This is the realm of ordinary reality of our life world. Our personal awareness is the archetypal awareness of Sambogakaya realm, and so we can know the archetypal dimension of existing-ness. We can know the Sambogakaya realm since we are personal Sambogkaya knowingness. Our personal awareness knowingness is archetypal and our knowingness is the very same energies and light that we experience in and as the Sambogakaya dimension.
Our freedom and capacity for luminous knowing, luminous movement and luminous action is much more subtle and refined in, and as the archetypal dimension. For our personal awareness there is less determination and less fixated concrete physical formulation within our dimension of Being as the realm of light and energy field configurations. There is more spaciousness and subtle freedom of movement for self-liberation in the archetypal realm.
As we are ground awareness or Dharmakaya knowingness there is no subject and no otherness. We are only pure awareness. We are pure potentiality. We are vast stillness and the movement that brings forth the Sambogakaya dimension and Nirmanakaya dimension simultaneously. We are this the dimension of Being that is not yet a being. You and I are in potentiality and are Being becoming beings in time. As primordial awareness, we are Being and yet we are not yet a being. We are Being and we are a beings in potentiality.
Being in potentiality means you are Being in potentiality. Is not that amazing! In Dharmakaya or ground awareness you are Being in potentiality. In the archetypal dimension you are becoming being in actuality. And in Nirmanakaya you are a being in actuality. In simultaneousness of knowing all three dimensions you are sequentially Being that is not yet a being, and then you are becoming a being in actuality, and then you are a being in actuality. Being a being in potentiality means you are not yet in actuality. Nevertheless Being a being in potentiality is the actuality of Being a being in potentiality. This means you are existing in potentiality as the potentiality of your very being. This is existence in potentiality, and the actuality of potentiality. This is not just any potentiality like an open space where anything and everything can fill in, rather this is the actuality of your potentiality. Is not this amazing. This is the understanding of the great Dzogchen master Longchenpa. To understand this description of is to understand the actuality of your potentiality of self-liberation from the very beginning-less beginning.
The Time Dimension of the Kayas
There is the dimension of time as the ordinary reality of Nirmanakaya. There is the dimension of time of archetypal reality, the Sambogakaya dimension. There is the dimension of timeless awareness as Dharmakaya, pure potentiality. This Dharmakaya dimension of timeless awareness is beyond time yet manifests time.
Function
In the realm of mind alone we are the function of mind’s mentalistic knowing. In the realm of Nirmanakaya we are the function of Nirmanakaya embodied knowing of ordinary reality. In the realm of Sambogakaya we are the function of archetypal knowing of the realm of Sambogakaya. In the realm of Dharmakaya we are in the realm of knowing not as an entity but as the pure potentiality of the ground awareness.
To know directly the dimensions of the kayas we must be in the realm of the specific kaya to have the knowing of that specific kaya. To know directly the archetypal dimension, we must be located in the Sambogakaya realm. The experiential dissociation between the kayas must be dissolved in order to experience simultaneously the multidimensionality of the kayas. We can actually experience all three kaya’s simultaneously. We as knower can experience all three forms of knowing simultaneously. We can experience all three dimensions simultaneously. Our knowing within the three dimensions of awareness is possible. We can also be limited to only to the Nirmanakaya experience and be foreclosed to Sambogakaya and Dharmakaya experience.
Knowing the kaya from mentalistic mind alone is not the experiential knowledge of the kaya. Mentalistic knowledge is not the experiential knowledge of the Sambogakaya. Mentalistic knowledge is not the embodied experience of the Sambogakaya. Mentalistic knowledge is not direct knowingness. Mentalistic meditated knowledge gives us conceptual knowledge and information.
Dissociation
There is a natural dissociation that developmentally unfolds between the mind and Nirmanakaya, between Nirmanakaya and Sambogakaya, and between Sambogakaya and Dharmakaya. The liberating process of embodiment unfolds by the embodiment of mind within awareness. As this unfolds, there is the embodiment of Nirmanakaya field of awareness which can then open into the embodiment of Sambogakaya awareness field. And as the unfolding continues one can embody the Dharmakaya awareness field. Dissociation may be cut through and be dissolved either step by step or in the totality of the immediacy of the moment.
Self-Liberation
The process of self-liberation is the process of embodiment of the kayas. The embodiment process can unfold dimension by dimension. The first embodiment may be the embodiment of primordial awareness embodied as Nirmanakaya. Then there may be the embodiment of awareness as Sambogakaya. And then the embodiment of awareness as Dharmakaya. Through embodiment, all three kayas may be experienced simultaneously. Liberation is an embodiment process, the process of the embodiment of awareness, the luminous dimensions of awareness.
In the unfolding process of embodiment the dissociative boundaries between the different realms become thin and there is a permeable boundary between the different kayas, the different dimensions. The Dharmakaya infuses the Sambogakaya and the Sambogakaya infuses the Nirmanakaya.
The capacity to experience the different dimensions both singularly and all three simultaneously happens. Moreover, in knowing these different dimensions of awareness, this knowingness leads to the deepening of the embodiment of the awareness field and the different field manifestations of the dimensions of primordial awareness.
This embodiment of different dimensions is self-liberation. The embodiment process is the embodiment of the immanence of existence. By our experiencing the Sambogakaya and Dharmakaya dimensions we are embodying directly timeless awareness within time. Within the field of awareness, these different dimensions exist in cohesiveness.
The Power of Invocation of the Archetypal Dimension and Dimension of Pure Potentiality
The power of invocation is the power to bring forth the archetypal field of the Sambogakaya dimension into our Nirmanakaya dimension of our life world. The bringing forth of the implicate archetypal luminous configurations and integrating them into our ordinary experience as Nirmanakaya is a powerful and transformative experience. This experience is protective as well as beneficently liberating. The benevolent and fierce archetypal energies can reorganize prevalent archetypal configurations that are both disturbing and disintegrating. The capacity to bring forth the archetypal field into our life world is an amazing capacity. This capacity is completely natural and these capacities are the very nature of our awareness. In this skillful undertaking the Sambogakaya archetypal dimension is integrated or blended into the Nirmanakaya of ordinary life world.
Drama of Invocation: Knowing as Multi- Dimensional
This power of invocation of the archetypal dimension within our embodiment is the experience of the personification of the light, the personification of the energy and the personification of the configurations of the luminous fields of form. The archetypal field infuses the mind and the body. We embody the dimensions within our person and within our circumstances and within the events of life. Much of the power of invocation is shamanistic in origin. Even the Tibetan invocations are shamanistic in origin. The drama of invocation involves the capacity to experience timeless awareness in time. So in praxis the person enters into the field of awareness and descends into the timeless dimension and within the depth of timelessness arises the archetypal dimension and the archetypal configurations can be expanded into time and circumstances of times. Within this experience the person sustains and maintains both the experience of timeless awareness and time simultaneously
The power of invocation is a function of our awareness to enter the kaya of Sambogakaya or kaya of Dharmakaya. The doorway is most direct through timeless awareness and at the same time being in ordinary time. The person is simultaneously within Nirmanakaya time, Sambogakaya time and Dharmakaya timelessness.
The archetypal dimensions and Dharmakaya dimension can infuse our life and our thoughts, our affects, our sensations, our imaginal capacity, our realm of symbolic thinking. These dimensions empower us and are the essence of the dynamic awareness empowerment.
In many different traditions, the lama, the shaman, the brahman, the priest may present empowerments. These empowerments are not presenting within us something new that was not there before. These empowerments are openings and transmissions through the dissociative boundaries between the kayas and our mind and our awareness. These empowerments bring forth the experience that is already present but not experientially known within us. The action of empowerment is the power of invocation and bringing forth the archetypal fields within one’s self and others. Ultimately all empowerments are self-empowerments. Our own innermost luminous awareness participates directly in these dramas of invocation. These empowerment dramas will affect the awakening of the archetypal and ground awareness dimensions within us and others.
Self-Agency as Invocation Power
The sense of self agency goes beyond mental intentionality as in a mental good intention. The person is accessing the different dimensions of their own awareness field in its multidimensionality going beyond the mental intention. Agency can be a function of mind alone, agency can be a function of awareness, agency can be a function of the field of awareness as Nirmanakaya, agency can be a function of field of awareness as Sambogakaya, and agency can be a function of the field as pure Dharmakaya. The sense of agency can arise from timeless awareness and enter time. The sense of agency can reflect the archetypal dimension as the archetypal agency, which is present in the archetypal dimension. The sense of agency can be attuned to the Dharmakaya of pure potentiality. The sense of Dharmakaya agency is the experience of unbound self- manifestation of primordial awareness.
One more time! The sense of agency of Dharmakaya is the experience of unbound self-manifestation of primordial ground awareness.
Jyotish Mati: Illumination of Awareness Field
There is a particular skill for entering into the experience of the trans- lucidity of archetypal manifestations with both understanding and comprehension and this is call Jyotish Mati. This Jyotish Mati is the perceptual skill of perceiving directly into the archetypal manifestations both in circumstances, dreams, and astrological text. This skill is both a give- ness for some people and can be deepened by meditative practice. Jyotish Mati is a form of gnosis or direct perception. Jyotish Mati is knowing the light within phenomena as the light. Jyotish Mati is a skill necessary if one is to be skilled astrologer who actually perceives what he or she is describing and elaborating. The astrological text manifests this trans- lucidity within the consultation. The consultation is a relational trans-lucid experience for both the astrologer and the person in consultation.
Although the understanding about Jyotish Mati arises out of Vedic astrological tradition, Jyotish Mati is an archetypal relational skill and this Jyotish Mati skill is useful for any person working within the archetypal dimension of experience. To cultivate this skill of Jyotish Mati, a person must learn to gaze within the field of luminous awareness of awareness. The person must learn to experience the luminosity of ordinary phenomena. Because they experience the light of their own awareness, a person can experience the luminosity of phenomena. The skill is not only for astrologer but everyone who wishes to experience the pure luminosity of all phenomena.
When a person can experience the purity of their own awareness, the path is open for the person to experience the luminous purity of all phenomena. This purity is the lucidity within phenomena. And from within this dimension of awareness the dimension of the archetypal begins to manifest and the person can gaze into the archetypal manifestation from the place of the trans-lucidity of awareness. Finally a person can attune themselves to the foundational dimension of pure potentiality and can experience the actual manifestation of the phenomenological attunement to the pure potentiality, the pure no-thingness that is manifesting everything and anything.
Jyotish Mati is a metaphor for human knowingness in its multidimensionality. Jyotish Mati is an emphasis on Nirmanakaya, Sambogakaya and Dharmakaya intertwining. Our knowingness as Jyotish Mati is knowing the three dimensions of existing-ness simultaneously. Unhappily, most often our knowingness is existentially limited to the Nirmanakaya dimension of ordinary reality. Most often the realm of Sambogakaya and Dharmakaya are foreclosed experientially. For many if not most, these dimensions are not matters of experience but of belief. Of course as Descartes knew belief and doubt always go together.
Lucidity of Phenomena
It is liberating to know and experience the lucidity within all phenomena. There is light within phenomena as well as lucidity within the personal awareness. A skilled person may perceive the luminosity of phenomena since they experience the light of their own awareness. The light of their own awareness is meeting and penetrating the light within phenomena.
Ultimately the light of primordial awareness is manifesting both the light of phenomena and as well as the light of the knower of the phenomena. As the text Yeshe Lama the great handbook of Dzogchen declares the inner field meets the outer field. The inner field of light meets the outer field of light. The great Dzogchen master Dudjom Lingpa says that Dzogchen is the training to experience the luminous purity of all phenomena. Pure vision is to experience the purity of all the dimensions of pure phenomena. All of the kayas are pure luminosity.
This lucidity is completely pervasive in all three dimension or three kayas of existing-ness. There is the lucidity of Nirmanakaya, the lucidity of Sambogakaya and the lucidity of Dharmakaya dimension of existence.
Vast Potential of Timeless Awareness
The praxis of contemplative awareness suggests that when we are able and willing to experience the field of Being within whatever we are experiencing as the field of being, self-liberation happens. As we abide within the field of potential space of primordial awareness we come to know directly the vast potential of timeless awareness within us and around us. In the present and open moment of awareness, experiencing the purity of awareness, there can be opening of the vortices of the archetypal dimension of pure potentiality. The archetypal opens as the experience of open awareness, and awareness itself opens unto the depth and breathe of timeless awareness.
This realm of timeless awareness is known as the Dharmakaya or ground awareness in phenomenological Dzogchen. It is important not to think that these dimensions are experientially distant from each other. These kayas are in non-duality within the duality of the difference of these dimensions. These dimensions are totally indivisible and yet distinct. So we may have access to these different dimensions of awareness since we are these different dimensions here and now. We are these different dimensions of timeless awareness in time. When a person is exquisitely sensitive they can experience through one kaya the other kayas in direct resonance and perception. A person can feel through one kaya into the other two kayas. Through the duality of the kayas the person can enter the non-duality of the kayas.
Timeless Awareness through the Present Moment
Our present moment is open into the depth and breathe of timeless awareness. Timeless awareness is the essence of our human awareness. Timeless awareness manifests in time. As human person we can be in timeless awareness and time simultaneously. Timeless awareness unfolding into time is the dramatic vibrational luminous manifestation of the archetypal configurations becoming in time. You and I have the capacity to enter timeless awareness and experience the unfolding of the manifestation of the archetypal forms and energies. By being in timeless awareness and time, we can know directly the archetypal dimension and its unfolding manifestation. We will be in archetypal time. By being in archetypal time and archetypal knowing within such knowing we can move and act within the archetypal Sambogakaya realm. Moreover we can invoke and bring forth the infusion of the archetypal Sambogakya realm into the Nirmanakaya realm of ordinary life world.
Awareness and the Different Dimensions of Time
There are four times. There is the time of the present moment, there is the time of the past, and there is the time of the future. And there is a fourth time which is timeless awareness. When a person is in timeless awareness in time, a person can extend the light of awareness into the present moment of a person, and the person can extend the light of awareness into the past time of a person, and the person can extend the light of timeless awareness into future time of person. The great Tibetan Dzogchen master Yang Thang Rinpoche described this capacity as absolute compassion.
The Time Dimension of the Kayas: Another Time Dimension
There is the dimension of time of ordinary reality of Nirmanakaya. There is the dimension of time of the Sambogakaya realm, archetypal time. And there is the timeless dimension of Dharmakaya or ground awareness. This is timeless awareness is beyond time.
The Felt Sense of Archetypal Experience
The felt sense of the archetypal experience is focal in the experiential understanding of the various manifestations of the archetypal dimension. The felt sense of the experience of the phenomenological luminous manifestation of the ordinary situation, the luminous felt sense of the archetypal situation in the direct knowing of the appearing of the archetypal luminous energy.
This may also include the felt sense of the astrological interpretations that are being made during the astrological consultation. The felt sense can arise from the experience of the immediacy of the situation and the immediacy of the metaphorical interpretation. The felt sense can arise from the experience of the archetypal expression as the metaphorical planetary energies and planetary fields. The cosmological energetic dimension is interpreted through the language of the metaphorical astrological configurations and meaning.
Awareness Gnosis and Mind Gnosis
The great master of Phenomenological Dzogchen during the 11th century Rongzom Chokyi Zangpo spoke about the different dimensions of gnosis, the different dimensions of direct knowingness. There is gnosis of awareness which is the direct knowing of awareness of Being, the direct knowing of indivisibleness, and the direct knowing within duality as non- duality.
He also spoke about gnosis of the mind. Now there is the knowing of mind which knows beings and forms. The knowing of the mind knows duality, knows difference. Now when the knower knows both within mind and both within awareness something amazingly happens.
The gnosis of awareness enters union with the knowing of mind. The gnosis of awareness infuses the knowing of mind, so there arises direct perception both as primordial awareness and through the mind as vehicle of primordial awareness. The gnosis of mind arises out of the union of mind and awareness, the mysterious conjunctio to use Jung’s language. This union of gnosis of mind and gnosis of awareness opens for us the experience non-duality within the duality of the different dimensions of human existing-ness. Within duality of the different dimension non-duality is experienced.
Felt Sense
From within the felt sense of the situation, the felt sense of the archetypal manifestations can be felt, and experientially the archetypal configurations can be made explicit. In the explicitness of the experience the deeper implicit archetypal energies of a person become known and provide a more dimensional understanding of our own self and our life context. This unfolding process is the unfolding of our experience of the archetypal configuration within the corresponding implicit energy becoming explicit, and the implicit meaning becoming more explicitly meaning full.
Within this unfolding context existential choice becomes possible. Potential space becomes present. From the innermost place of timeless awareness action becomes possible in time. Timeless awareness is the sea of potentiality, indeterminate and unbound creativity.
Luminous Energy and Meaning
In archetypal work, the work is both luminous energy and luminous meaning. There is the constant interplay between energy and meaning between the felt sense and signification. This experiencing of energy, meaning and Being are intertwined in the archetypal experience. This knowing reflects the complete union of mind and awareness. This knowing reflects the union of form and Being. This means through a being, a being knows Being. This being may be one’s own being or the being of another.
Archetypal and Existential Continuity
The person can come to experience the connection between the existential situation and the archetypal configurations that are actually manifesting the existential situation and the person’s personal psychological experiencing of the existential situation. There can be an experiential as well as strategic approach to solving the existential situation within the context of archetypal configuration that can possibly come into being. By going deeper into the trans-lucidity of experience the person may open the innate liberation of archetypal energies and light. There is the opening of the light as the archetypal dimension apparitional light and energy as well as in the ordinary life field of Nirmanakaya.
Open Focusing and Enactment
The work of self-illumination can continue the deepening of the implicit experiential dimension through the use of focusing methods or the deepening and expansion can come forth through dramatic enactments both of the situational as well as enactments of the archetypal Sambogakaya configurations. Such enactments will directly draw or ingather into experience the convergence of the two dimensions of situational and archetypal configurations. In this way the unconscious is made experientially conscious and so greater and clearer action can take place to liberate the self within the context of the concrete situation as an archetypal manifestation.
By enactment means the enactment of the archetypal energies in expression and in drama. Expression is both in thought and in action. This enactment can also be the enactment of the astrological planetary configurations as well as the enactment of the archetypal expression as the gods and goddesses of mythological characteristics.
The Field Of Awareness
Whatever happens, happens within the field of awareness. The field of awareness is translucent knowingness. The two methods thus far explicated have been experiential focusing and experiential enactment of situation as well as the enactment of archetypal configurations that are manifesting the situation and circumstances as well as our psychological experience.
There can be a deepening expression and experience of the psychological experience as well as the experience of circumstances. Focusing and enactments can be used. Focusing is focusing on the inner experience, and articulating the experience in an experiential near manner. Enactment is the amplification of our experience through action.
Existential Mood
Heideggerian phenomenological tradition emphasizes the mood of our world view or mood of the field in which we live. Astrological understanding also emphasizes the astrological field configurations that bring forth the continuous mood of our life. Ultimately the mood reflects the person’s ongoing state of being in the world within his ongoing state of awareness. There is a field quality and not simply an emotional affective state that appears and disappears. The mood is the experiential quality of the field. This felt sense is the mood of the field. The experiential quality of the field in its appearance is mood. The mood is often the ongoing experience of the experience of the archetypal configuration infusing both context and subjective experience. The archetypal realm is a source of mood.
Mood and its Expression
So the mood of the person can reflect the overall context of their archetypal configuration including planetary metaphors or mythic metaphors such as the archetypal deities and dakinis. This articulation of mood is more than a situational or a conflictual context. It is the mood of being in the world that the person continuously lives in and even dies in. This mood can be articulated archetypally and can become consciously explicit and experientially meaningful.
This mood can be made explicit through the experiential focusing methods as well as psycho-dramatic enactment methods, as well as through experiential felt sense methods. So the artful expression and interpretive skill of the existential consultant can invoke the archetypal mythic as well as astrological planetary fields. Artful expressions of planetary configurations and forces can invoke true and deep experience of the planetary fields. Such invocations of planetary forces can reshape the experience of ongoing continuous mood of being in the world.
Metabolism of Experience as Embodiment
A powerful and liberating quality of awareness is the metabolizing of experience within the field of awareness. There is also cutting open of the experience and unpacking and opening of the archetypal energies and circumstance and our personal psychological reactiveness. The metabolizing and dissolving of the experiential archetypal configurations is a developed function of living in the intensity of pure awareness. So the invoking of archetypal field configurations and the personal making present of archetypal configurations can be held within pure awareness. The metabolizing of the archetypal configurations can take place within the purity of awareness. Metabolizing means a digesting of the archetypal field and so there is a dissolving and digesting of the archetypal powers of experiential organization. Metabolizing is an embodiment process.
Cutting through Energetic Archetypal Configurations.
Besides the power of awareness to metabolize and dissolve the felt sense of archetypal configurations, there is the power for cutting through archetypal fields and deconstructing them. In a sense a person can be working on the re-configuration of archetypal experience within their self- awareness and within their life circumstances. Dzogchen awareness methods for cutting through and self-illumination are most useful. Togel is a method of gazing into and through the luminosity of phenomena. The gaze of awareness illuminates phenomena and brings opens the lucidity of phenomena. Trekcho is a method of using awareness to cut through experiential configurations of affect, mood, visionary experience, archetypal imagery, as well as states of mind and other experiential affective forms that obscure the experience of the open luminous awareness field. Trekcho is also a method for cutting through archetypal fields and archetypal configurations. To cut through the archetypal field of the archetypal Sambogakaya realm, the person must be in the Sambogakaya archetypal realm to exercise the power of cutting through the negative archetypal fields. The doorway is often through our power of entering timeless awareness and time simultaneously.
Pure Potentiality
The most profound dimension and often the least available to experience is the kaya of pure potentiality, pure creative space of Dharmakaya. Some persons are able to enter the pure dimension of potentiality, spaciousness potentiality and who can be a vehicle for the manifestation of potentiality within their circumstances and the circumstances of others. We can attune our self to this dimension and we can use archetypal metaphors of this dimension that help bring us into attunement and into the unbound openness of timeless potentiality that is pure love. To embody awareness is to ultimately embody this dimension which is Being itself. And this Being itself comes to us and gives itself to us as us. Being self-manifests in us and gives its presence to us within us, as our very own knowing being- ness. We are the house, the place of Being itself. This Being is not a being, but manifests all beings. By being a being we are ultimately this Being in its very manifestation. To know this experientially is to be completely liberated. To know this experientially is experience the power of Being’s self- manifestation. This is the gift of self- liberation.
Embodiment of Being as Our Own Being
This process of embodiment is a co emergent, experiential and existential process. One can have astrological chart read from by the astrologer to know one’s own mind. This is a mind to mind understanding. This is not yet the magical process of entering the archetypal medium of awareness where change and transformation can take place. This mind to mind understanding can be changed into innermost awareness knowing innermost awareness. The interpersonal becomes the intersubjective and the intersubjective becomes the medium of the archetypal dimension.
Embodiment of Being as Self Liberation
The experience of the different archetypal manifestation bring forth the embodiment of the archetypal dimension of experience and further brings forth our ongoing sense of the oneness of Being as our own being. The embodiment of archetypal energies provide the embodiment of Being as the archetypal dimension of luminous Sambogakaya.
By our experiencing the Sambogakaya and Dharmakaya dimension we are embodying directly timeless awareness within time. We are directly embodying Being in its power of manifestation. By experiencing Being in its power of manifestation, we are able to participate in the great compassion which is the power of Beings manifestation. This is amazing and great benefit for ourselves and others. This is the gift of Being itself and is the self-manifestation of Being as our own being. Being itself empowers us and liberates us. To experience Being ‘s self-manifestation of our own being is to experience Being itself. Being which is not a being but manifests everything and anything. Being is Dharmakaya. Being is no thing-ness. Being is manifestation. Being is self-liberation.
Knowing as Dimensional
The simultaneous union of mind and awareness, the conjunctio of mind and awareness opens the experience of the archetypal understanding and experience. Archetypal experience is both conceptual and non-conceptual. Experience and thought are held simultaneously. A person not only understands the archetypal but a person can enter into the archetypal dimension, and become the archetypal dimension. A person not only knows the Nirmanakaya dimension the person is the Nirmanakaya dimension. A person knows the Dharmakaya as the Dharmakaya dimension. A person is the Dharmakaya. A person knows the Sambogakaya as the Sambogakaya. A person is the Sambogakaya dimension. A person is the archetypal dimension. There is the unfolding experience of experiencing all three dimensions simultaneously. A person who is all three dimensions simultaneously is liberated.
A person can experience timeless awareness and time simultaneously. And a person can experience simultaneously the manifestation from timeless awareness into time. The experience of timeless awareness can extend into the past, and enter into the present and enter into the future.
The archetypal manifestation is inclusive of the past, and the present and the future. The view of timeless awareness opens the experience of the different dimensions and manifestations of time. A person can experience awareness and the light of awareness into the three different dimensions of past, present, and future. This is the great compassion.
In summary we have gazed into the cosmological nature of archetypal dimension and the corresponding drama of embodiment. We have focused on archetypal metaphors of planetary metaphors, mythological deities, and the realm of person dreams. We have explored the felt sense, open focusing, enactment, hermeneutic interpretation, metabolizing of mood, and the power of invocation.
Multidimensional Personhood
We are a multidimensional person. We experience our appearance as the Nirmanakaya dimension and simultaneously we are the Sambogakaya dimension experiencing the manifestation of luminous energy becoming everything and anything. We experience the open potential of purity, the pure manifestation of no thingness.
We may experience all three dimensions of primordial awareness through the view of non-duality: as pure potentiality, we experience Being as our being, and Being is experienced as Being itself.
Appearance and Self Liberation
As we experience the archetypal realm becoming apparent and as this manifestation infuses the appearance of the ordinary realm of experience. This infusion illuminates the realm of appearance as the realm of Being. And the phenomenal appearance becomes the appearance of Being itself, the phenomenal appearance becomes the realm of self-liberation. The illumination of the archetypal realm infuses the self-illumination of phenomenal appearance. This is liberation through appearance.
In this way our knowingness becomes wisdom, and the essence of awareness opens and all phenomenal existence becomes pervasively pure. The purity of primordial awareness.
Cosmological /Ontological View as Source
As this phenomenology of the archetypal realm unfolds there is shift of view from being located in psychology of mind alone and the limiting view of psychology as source, to the vast unbound view of cosmological and ontological source. The qualities of mind and the qualities of person and qualities of circumstance are expressions and manifestations of the cosmological ontological source. What seems to be personal light and energy is actually cosmological/ ontological light and cosmological/ontological conscious energy. There is the shift from personal awareness to the unfolding of cosmological/ ontological primordial awareness. There is shift from duality alone to the ongoing experience of non-duality within duality.
Rudolph Bauer, Ph.D.
The Washington Center for Consciousness Studies and the Washington Center of Phenomenological and Existential Psychotherapy Studies
Peter Bauer, Archetypal Astrologer, Laurel Canyon Center for Consciousness Studies and the Washington Center for Consciousness Studies
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